State of Kansas v. State of Colorado (533 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 11, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 533 U.S. 1 · 121 S. Ct. 2023
- Decided
- June 11, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Interstate Relations
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Unspecifiable
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. The Arkansas River rises in the mountains of Colorado just east of the Continental Divide, descends for about 280 miles to the Kansas border, then flows through that State, Oklahoma, and Arkansas and empties into the Mississippi River. On May 20, 1901, Kansas first invoked this Court’s original jurisdiction to seek a remedy for Colorado’s diversion of water from the Arkansas River. See Kansas v. Colorado, 185 U. S. 125, 126 (1902) (statement of case). In opinions written during the past century, most recently in Kansas v. Colorado, 514 U. S. 673, 675-678 (1995), we have described the history and the importance of the river. For present purposes it suffices to note that two of those cases, Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46 (1907), and Colorado v. Kansas, 320 U. S. 383 (1943), led to the negotiation of the Arkansas River Compact (Compact), an agreement between Kansas and Colorado that in turn was approved by Congress in 1949. See 63 Stat. 145. The case before us today involves a claim by Kansas for damages based on Colorado’s violations of that Compact. The Compact was designed to “[s]ettle existing disputes and remove causes of future controversy” between the two States and their citizens concerning waters of the Arkansas River and to “[ejquitably divide and apportion” those waters and the benefits arising from construction…
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